Marshal is the Literacy Design Collaborative / Math Design Collaborative Coordinator for the Arkansas Department of Education. He is also an educational consultant who provides professional development related to curriculum development, school improvement, and educational technology for schools in Oklahoma and Arkansas. As a teacher, he taught Algebra I, Geometry, Computer Applications, Computer Programming, and AP Computer Science and was also involved with school improvement programs. You can learn more about him in his Twitter and Linkedin profiles.

We met Marshal as part of our work with LDC. He has attended multiple partner convenings and suggested great improvements to the tools we create for teachers.

Throughout his career, Marshal has demonstrated a strong passion for education and student learning, and we can’t wait to hear his thoughts about education and technology.

]]>http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/guest-blogger-marshal-hurst/feed0The Need to Represent the World in Children’s Learning Appshttp://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/the-need-to-represent-the-world-in-childrens-learning-apps
http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/the-need-to-represent-the-world-in-childrens-learning-apps#commentsMon, 27 Jul 2015 15:33:58 +0000http://www.mobility-labs.com/?p=2215As a kid, I always wondered why so many games didn’t have interesting girl characters. I grew up in the era of Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, Zelda, and an assortment of first-person shooter games starring tough white guys. You know the situation’s not great when Princess Peach is the closest you get to seeing someone even vaguely like yourself in a game–and you can’t even play as her.

One of the major challenges of designing a game for a diverse worldwide audience is tackling issues of representation. We need to ensure that we provide a set of character options that allow children to create a character who could represent them while exposing them to children who differ from them.

Many recent articles have highlighted the dearth of people of color in popular children’s books. The Census Bureau estimates that about half of children in the U.S. under the age of 5 are nonwhite, but the Cooperative Children’s Book Center found that only about 14% percent of children’s books published involve or are written by people of color.

The concern about the lack of representation in children’s media is twofold and impacts all children, not just those underrepresented. First, for underrepresented groups, it makes it difficult to see themselves in different roles or conveys the idea that their experiences don’t matter. Second, for overrepresented groups, it makes it difficult for them to see others as belonging and also prevents them from learning about the similarities and differences across groups and cultures.

This problem extends to children’s games as well, and as app creators, we feel it’s our responsibility to work to correct this issue in our products.

We are in the process of developing supporting characters in our learning games to ensure that children learn more about others. As a child progresses through the app, he/she will meet characters who expose them to different cultures and people. Although this requires extra effort to research and revise, we know that it’s an important part of ensuring that our app leads to excellent learning outcomes outside of just the academic content.

We are also building an interface that allows children to create their own character using a variety of different skin tones, hair colors, eye shapes, clothing, and other features. We want every child to be able to point to their character and say, “That’s me!” and know that they too can be the protagonist of any adventure they can imagine.

A few early versions of possible characters with clothes more common to the U.S. Many more to come!
]]>http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/the-need-to-represent-the-world-in-childrens-learning-apps/feed0The Federal Trade Commission Explains How to do Social Mediahttp://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/the-federal-trade-commission-explains-how-to-do-social-media
http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/the-federal-trade-commission-explains-how-to-do-social-media#commentsTue, 14 Jul 2015 17:16:57 +0000http://www.mobility-labs.com/?p=2204The story: recently the Federal Trade Commission updated their guidance on using social media as a promotional tool.

Start-ups, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and small businesses all depend on social media for marketing, and we commonly ask our friends, partners, co-workers, volunteers, and advocates to engage on our behalf. Larger companies often ask their employees to participate as well.

We make and receive many requests to like Facebook pages and posts, re-tweet promotional information, vote up Reddit articles, and review things on Amazon. To some it seems perfectly normal to comment on blogs or post reviews as if we were a neutral observer or satisfied customer, not disclosing that we might actually be a close friend, partner, or family member.

The virtues of transparency and disclosure have become more apparent as social media matures, and almost everyone uses it. But these virtues often are often sacrificed to those of expediency and efficiency. Who has time to mention that a re-tweet of a client’s project is actually a promotion? Or the space to add a disclosing hashtag on a platform that only gives you 140 characters?

Social media is also marked by informality, the mixing of personal and professional, and the idea that speech should be free and uncensored. But if this speech is being compensated, even indirectly, then the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) considers it promotional speech, and they have something to say about it.

What they have to say can be found online, in a set of guidelines with examples and instructions.

What Do The Guidelines Say?

Basically, the guidelines are telling us to disclose any connections. According to the guidelines, each individual tweet, post, review, etc., should include information identifying it as an ad or disclosing the relationship. Because there is a lot of material, the wise course would be to review the original text. This article also has a pretty good overview.

A few points worth considering:

If you are running a contest that asks your fans, customers, etc. to spread the word in order to win something, it is the responsibility of the brand to ensure that the nature of this sharing is disclosed. The FTC suggests requiring a hashtag such as #contest or #sweepstakes.

Tweets and posts generally should be individually labelled, using a hashtag such as #ad. The FTC does acknowledge that not all tweets by a company are promotional and leaves room for professional endorsers whose status is well known to leave off the individual disclosures.

Employees who are asked to promote something for their employer must disclose the relationship, and employers cannot ask employees to post something that is “untrue, that is not that employee’s valid opinion, or to endorse a product or service they are unfamiliar with.”

Like buttons may require disclosure, but the guidelines are ambiguous: “However, we don’t know at this time how much stock social network users put into “likes” when deciding to patronize a business, so the failure to disclose that the people giving “likes” received an incentive might not be a problem.” Buying likes from people not familiar with the product or service is clearly a deceptive practice, however.

Don’t Be Alarmed at the New FTC Guidelines

The Federal Trade Commission is trying to identify a line, but the guidelines are mostly to help businesses stay well clear of that line. A couple recent articles have taken an alarmist tone, warning us to implement these guidelines because some kind of crackdown is coming.

There is no crackdown coming. The guidelines are strictly voluntary. The underlying law is the same unfair and deceptive practices law that applies to all forms of advertising. It has not changed. The Federal Trade Commission does have authority to file complaints based on that law, but these complaints are rare and initially consist of a cease and desist order. Fines are not imposed unless that order is violated.

If you are a blogger, small business, or non-profit struggling to get attention and aren’t completely in accord with the guidelines, the chances of FTC enforcement are remote. The guidelines themselves state:

Are you monitoring bloggers?

Generally not, but if concerns about possible violations of the FTC Act come to our attention, we’ll evaluate them case by case. If law enforcement becomes necessary, our focus usually will be on advertisers or their ad agencies and public relations firms. Action against an individual endorser, however, might be appropriate in certain circumstances.

Conclusion

The truth is that the likelihood of enforcement for non-compliance with the guidelines is extremely low. But there are other consequences if someone is deceptive on social media. The search engines (including social media search tools) are becoming more sophisticated, and obviously fake reviews may actually incur a penalty. Moreover, there are always members of communities that pride themselves in uncovering reviewers and promoters, which can create be embarrassing to a company. It’s worth noting that comments and reviews continue to exist after a particular campaign ends, and there have been cases where older content that was convincing when originally posted has been exposed by social or technological developments that arose years later. These revelations still have the power to embarrass the company originally responsible. The incentive to be transparent may come more from these pressures than from the FTC.

Are branding and search engine optimization (SEO) two competing forces fighting over the same territory? Sometimes it seems that way. There are articles that discuss achieving the right balance between SEO and branding, as if these were two competing goals in a zero sum game.

It does happen, people worrying about branding strategy will propose tactics that the good SEO practitioner will oppose. And some SEO practitioners act as if only the content is important and the brand is completely irrelevant. Arguments are typically over page title tags, information architecture, and whether keyword choices should reflect branding goals or research into what phrases searchers are actually using.

Sometimes it is tempting to think that once a website ranks first for the brand name, all future efforts should focus on generic phrases.

These so-called trade-offs are not really a competition. Search engine optimization is a great tool to help branding, and branding is an excellent way to improve your SEO. After all, the function of a brand is condense a lot of information into a very small space.

Branding Impact on SEO

Google has long considered the authority of a website to be of great importance, and often a brand indicates authority. The National Institutes of Health, or WebMD are both powerful brands that give us greater confidence in the health information we may find there. If we see a new crazy finding about physics or biology, we would be more likely to believe it if we find it on Scientific American or a university website than on a tabloid news site.

For some time, it has been apparent that branding can add authority to websites. Recently, we learned that Google is going a step farther and associating brand directly with search phrases. According to a new patent, uncovered by Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz, Google is using searches that incorporate a brand with a keyword as a ranking factor. To give an example:

A lot of people are searching for tweed suits, but a significant number of the searches include the brand name “Harris,” Google will give Harris Tweed Suits more weight in the search results. Even people who have never heard of Harris will see that website ranked more highly.

Some writers take a more negative view of Google’s preference for brands, assuming this comes at the expense of small businesses and outsiders. SEOBook has compiled a list of decisions Google has made that seem to give weight to big brands. These include giving more authority to older websites, and using brand names as part of autosuggest and other suggested searches. Whether this is a deliberate strategy or just the algorithms reflecting user preferences is hard to say. After all, we do use brands frequently to make decisions, and having that information online is something many of us prefer, even if we don’t admit it.

SEO Impact on Branding

Looking in the other direction, how does SEO shape a brand? Every time you search for something and see the top results, you associate those top results with credibility, especially on the topic you are researching. Branding is more than the name of a company or its logo. Branding consists of all the associations and experiences people have with that company.

Good SEO places the company’s best content in association with the questions people most often have about that topic. The position is important, but there are other benefits as well. Often content that is the top result for a search phrase is given additional prominence, as an answer box, or with additional site links to important pages.

This gives the content, and the website delivering the content much additional authority in the mind of the user, because the search engine itself is seen as a trusted source.

Another important feature of SEO is the selection of the descriptions that will appear on the search engine result pages. Even if the user does not click through to the site, this description becomes a part of their experience with the brand. Not paying attention to this aspect can lead to significant negative branding, the name of the website may be displayed next to low quality content or indecipherable coding.

There is also the apparently obvious case of people searching for information about the company using the name or brand. This is done frequently as part of many important decisions, employment, purchasing, or recommendations. The content created by the company itself should be placed at the top of any search, otherwise many users may perceive the company as shady. Also important, any negative information out there should be addressed with content that is at least equally well placed on search engines. Otherwise the brand will be defined by those who don’t much care for it.

Conclusion: Branding and SEO Mutually Dependent

For better or worse, branding is now part of the search process, and attention to branding can help with SEO. More importantly, a good branding strategy should include SEO at the very beginning. The reality is many people will build their perception of your brand through various online experiences, and SEO is the best way to sculpt these experiences to your advantage.

]]>http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/brand-identity-as-part-of-search-engine-optimization/feed0Our First Global Learning XPRIZE Post!http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/our-first-global-learning-xprize-post
http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/our-first-global-learning-xprize-post#commentsTue, 23 Jun 2015 14:14:58 +0000http://live-mobility-labs.pantheon.io/?p=2154Today, 57 million children have no access to primary school and 250 million more children have access, but fail to attain basic literacy or numeracy. What if tomorrow we were able to provide every child access to a basic level of education? That is the goal of the new XPRIZE competition for global learning.

Because of our passion for building great software that solves real world problems and makes the world a better place, Mobility Labs is very excited about the Global Learning XPRIZE. The goal of XPRIZE competitions is to bring about radical innovations to benefit humanity. The Global Learning XPRIZE challenges teams around the world to build an app to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to children who may not have access to primary education. At the competition’s conclusion, the winning product’s code will be open source and licensed under Apache 2.0, meaning anyone with an interest to use, adapt, or improve the app can do so.

To help children develop basic literacy and numeracy skills, we’re building a self-guided learning application for Android tablets. These tablets are becoming more widespread thanks to falling product prices as well as their ease of use. Additionally, many countries have begun distributing tablets for education in order to support children who do not have access to traditional schools, which has created a greater demand for digital educational content.

What makes this app special (and fun!):

Children learn foundational math and reading skills through games

Diagnostics keep the content at the right level of difficulty

Children choose their own path to mastery of skills within a structured curriculum

Multiple activity types to practice core concepts

Asynchronous social interaction to encourage competition and collaboration

Opportunities to generate and share their own content

Access to a library of additional supporting resources, like e-books, songs, and games

Outside of our close collaboration with educators throughout the product development process, our team has experience with instructional design and creating digital media for young children. We believe that we currently have the ability to leverage technology to make an enormous impact on children and their communities.

Throughout the development process, we’ll be posting updates on the blog, so check back for more updates on the audiences we’re helping, the games we’re building, and ways that you can be a part of our work.

]]>http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/our-first-global-learning-xprize-post/feed0Ruminations of a Modern Polyglothttp://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/ruminations-of-a-modern-polyglot
http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/ruminations-of-a-modern-polyglot#commentsFri, 19 Jun 2015 17:46:31 +0000http://www.mobility-labs.com/?p=2056I’ve had to have a bit of a rethink of the word “polyglot” in my tenure so far at Mobility Labs. The word itself stems from the Greek words polu-, meaning “many”, and -glotta, meaning “tongue”. In linguistic terms, it refers to someone that is fluent in more than one spoken language. In my spare time, I am actively learning Japanese, Spanish, and French, but I am not fluent in any one of them; I can make out occasional conversational talk, but that’s about it. In that vein, I would not consider myself to be a polyglot.

However, over the course of my career, I’ve picked up a multitude of programming languages: C, Python, Java, Bash, Ruby, JavaScript, Clojure and RBDMS languages (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Thrift, and CQL) to name a few. In that vein, I would very much consider myself to be a polyglot.

In my time at Mobility Labs, I have worked across seven different languages and six different frameworks in four projects. However, switching between these languages (and even development paradigms) isn’t a difficult thing for me. In fact, I quite enjoy it – it forces me to think about developing solutions in completely different ways. Further, it helps me address problems that I couldn’t have expressed before, which is the most exciting part.

But how does the word “polyglot” apply to a software engineer in general? Just as a traveler learns new languages to thrive in a foreign country, so must the software engineer be capable of translating between languages when working on a project, in order for both the project and the engineer to thrive.

The way that modern languages have evolved and formed over the years is quite fascinating. Many of the words that modern English speakers use have roots in Latin or French, and often times, English speakers are coming up with new phrases and new ways to express themselves – portmanteaus being a particular example.

It’s often interesting to go back to the roots of one’s mother tongue and really think about where it came from. A while back, I was looking for a phrase that meant something similar to Caveat emptor, but applied to a person reading information. Piecing together what Latin I knew, I figured out that a lectern is something that people in the medieval times used to place books on, and that lectere means “to read” (after looking up “lectern”, of course). With a bit of help from Google Translator, having the base words in mind, I was able to conjugate and express, “Let the reader beware” by way of, “Caveat lector”.

Much of the same can be said of programming languages. New languages often based their syntax in more broadly known language, such as Java did while basing itself on C syntax. While there is a broader variety of languages now which don’t use all of the same conventions or structures that C once did – like Python; it explicitly forbids using curly braces for block statements – engineers are able to somewhat understand the differences between languages based on what they already know.

For most software engineers, working between languages is so commonplace that we often don’t realize that we’re making the context switch. For a full-stack developer, they may be working in HTML, CSS and JavaScript for one task, Java/Ruby/Python/PHP/Clojure for another task, and MySQL/PostgreSQL/Cassandra for another task. They may even have to move between all three layers for a single task.

The nuance of expression comes up when switching between different development paradigms, language subtleties, and the differences between frameworks. Just as there is an often stark difference between Latin and Asiatic languages, there is a difference between a language that is object-oriented, one that is entirely procedural, and one that is entirely functional, and one must adapt their thinking accordingly. Likewise with frameworks – while the number of frameworks across language ever grows larger, so do the assumptions, nuances, and “automagic”. Having worked prior in a Java shop, seeing Rails create methods from the way I had named my routes put me off at first, but then I grew to enjoy it.

The one constant that hasn’t changed is the basic ways to express basic concepts. This is analogous to spoken languages in that we should learn basic courtesies and requests in a foreign language. As such, declarations of variables across these language may be different in syntax, but it is entirely possible to declare variables in their own vernacular.

The same goes for data constructs, such as lists and arrays, or looping constructs; each language has a different style of expression for it, but the concept is roughly the same. It is in this that most developers moving across language find their anchor; they look for similar elements in a language and cling to them. It may help them learn, but in the long run, my experience has been to broaden my horizon and see a more effective way of expressing a problem.

In this profession, I would strongly consider myself a polyglot. I am able to understand a broad variety of languages, frameworks, and datastores, and I’m able to discern which would be more suited for the job. As I grow in my career and skills, I’m certain that I will become fluent in even more languages, frameworks, and methodologies.

Last time I wrote on the blog, I explored equity and technology in classrooms with a focus on students; this week, my focus is on teachers. Outside of just having access to tech, teacher expectations of students and technology as well as teacher support around implementing the technology in their classrooms greatly impact student learning.

Let’s start with expectations. Warschauer’s research found that students in low-SES schools were more likely to receive instruction centered on basic computer skills, possibly due to concern that the students lack access at home. However, in high-SES schools, many teachers assigned homework that required a computer and/or posted materials for students to access online, perhaps because almost all the students in the high-SES schools had computer and internet access at home. This freed up more class time to focus on completing more complex projects rather than teaching basic computer skills.

It’s unfair to expect students with vastly different access to tech resources and support to achieve the same things, and in many places, lack of internet or device access make it extremely difficult to assign technology-centered work. However, Warschauer’s study found that teachers in low-SES schools tended to overestimate the number of students who lacked computer and internet access at home. In many cases, teachers in low-SES schools could have, with added student supports, assigned work similar to what the higher-SES students were doing.

This is a single study and we shouldn’t assume that its findings apply to all high-SES and low-SES schools. However, to ensure tech doesn’t go to waste, all schools should be aware of what technologies students use and have access to outside of school. This could be done by having students and parents fill out surveys at the beginning of the year about their access to and level of proficiency with technology. With this data, teachers can plan lessons accordingly and administrators can adjust computer lab access hours and form partnerships with local libraries and community centers to provide additional access for students who don’t have it at home.

One other fact that really struck me was that high-SES schools are more likely to encourage communication and collaboration around best practices for using technology in the classroom and are also more likely to provide professional development and support staff. This likely led to these teachers having greater confidence in the technology being available and in working condition when it’s needed, making them more likely to plan to use it. Teachers in low-SES schools were more likely to avoid using technology in lessons out of fear that it wouldn’t work when they needed it and they would have to have a fallback activity planned, creating extra work for them and in their minds, wasting valuable instructional time. Even when schools have the devices, inequity in instruction and use can persist because of failure to consider differences in implementation.

What I find most baffling about these findings is that teachers who teach in low-SES schools are less likely to receive support around using technology in their classrooms despite the fact that they tend to have less experience and are less likely to be fully credentialed than teachers in high-SES schools. The students and teachers who most need additional support around using technology are less likely to get it, impacting student learning and making it likely that inequity will persist.

In order to remedy this situation, changes need to occur in a variety of areas related to increasing educational equity. Changes related to technology should include:

Providing additional support staff and training would help teachers implement technology more effectively and decrease inequity in technology use in the classroom.

Data on student access to and proficiency with technology would ensure teachers can use instructional time well.

Technology companies should ensure that products being used in low-SES schools include quality support materials for teachers, as they may not have adequate support on their own campuses.

]]>http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/inequity-and-technology-why-supporting-teachers-matters/feed0Giving Up the Wifi Passwordhttp://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/giving-up-the-wifi-password
http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/giving-up-the-wifi-password#commentsTue, 09 Jun 2015 22:41:38 +0000http://www.mobility-labs.com/?p=2040We have recently become a society in which it is normal to walk into a restaurant, sit down, and ask for the wifi password. For some people, it is just as normal to walk into someone’s home and ask the same question. In restaurants, the servers are normally quick to give up the password.

A few restaurants and malls either gather more information or push advertising at the users in exchange for this free service that has become standard, but many just offer it because it’s one of the things we now expect. Like a glass of water or a napkin.

The debate about giving passwords to houseguests has been going on online for years, but now one of the highest authorities on manners has weighed in. This column from around 2010 raises the question, the writer is in favor of providing it, but many of the commenters, at that time, seemed to be against giving the password away. Too personal.

Three years later, a blogger asks the question and the comments are generally in favor of providing the password right away to overnight guests. The blogger still feels that it’s somewhat of an invasion, plus she can’t find the password without a lot of effort.

Today, June 9th 2015, Miss Manners entered the fray, responding to a letter writer who claims the question is burning up social media. Her advice starts with the practical. At a dinner party:

If you were invited only to dinner, Miss Manners fears there is no good time to announce that you have more pressing things to do than enjoy your hosts’ and other guests’ company.

She does make an exception if you have specific need, such as looking up a fact on Wikipedia, or calling for a cab at the end of the evening. Longer term guests are more likely to have specific needs that require the password:

If you are a longer-term guest, the same is true, but the excuse might be better — checking flight information being more acceptable than checking dating Web sites.

But her larger point is still that guests should not assume that hosts will provide wifi. Will this distinction hold up over time? Guests of all kinds do have some fairly normal expectations, such as use of a bathroom, something to drink, dinner, etc. In spite of the reservations many of us still have, it is increasingly common for people to simultaneously converse, have dinner, attend events, and play games while in fairly constant communication with others over social media. While some may resist this trend, I suspect that giving guests the house wifi password will soon be as normal as telling them where to find the bathroom.

]]>http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/giving-up-the-wifi-password/feed0On Starting My New Job at Mobility Labshttp://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/on-starting-my-new-job-at-mobility-labs
http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/on-starting-my-new-job-at-mobility-labs#commentsFri, 29 May 2015 16:06:05 +0000http://www.mobility-labs.com/?p=2030I have been known to paraphrase President Barack Obama’s first inaugural address in remarking that the “patchwork heritage” of my own work history is a strength, not than a weakness. Different company types, different clients, different workflows and organizational structures, different people and software and office architecture. At times it felt less like a patchwork quilt and more like camouflage — so speckled and varied where it all just blends together. Through it all, I’ve learned and taken the best bits both from a creative point of view, and in managing the logistics and workflows of a business.

Joining Mobility Labs meant yet another new start. New people, new projects, new commute, new office — all the usual. I thought I’d seen it all, but I find myself in a fresh new situation, even compared to my most recent work adventures. In spite of working in countless New York design agencies and in-house teams, both as a freelancer and staffer, I hadn’t worked in a group that is so thoroughly distributed. For the first time I chat with my co-workers principally via Google Hangouts rather than in-person, we write via Slack rather than email, we talk mainly of Products that may live for years over Projects which have a very short and distinct life on our desks. The designers are outnumbered by developers. It’s quite eye-opening.

I was struck by the differences in the office environment as well. Mobility Labs isn’t wholly based in New York, so we don’t have a conventional office, we are set up at a co-working space in SoHo. I didn’t realize quite how accustomed I had been to the idea of the design studio in the classic sense — large counter spaces, machines and printers, paper and pens of various sorts, walls covered with cork boards and our in-progress work or scribbled research notes, and most importantly, privacy and knowledge that this is all ours. It’s jarring to be in a place where everyone huddles over laptops, sometimes from communal couches, where there are no bookshelves or pinboards, no phones on desks. I have yet to print anything from this office, making it the closest thing to a “paperless office” I’ve seen. It’s not surprising that we’re also without staplers, binder clips, white out, or any other typical office bric-a-brac. It’s a BYOWorkstation approach.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some grandpa yearning for the return of rotary phones and carbon paper. I’ve never been a corporate stooge, never had an expense account, never enjoyed the luxury of handing off my marker-sketch designs to a “studio” who will render it all perfectly over night. I absolutely hate 3-hour marathon meetings, heavily-bageled though they may be. I have zero love for corner offices which shut out the light, or middle managers who insist on “checking in”, or layers of account coordinator types who spend more time gossiping than writing endless emails (which is impressive in its own right). My habits as a designer were forged in the fires of freelance and solo practice; I do my own production work, archive and manage my own resources, interact with clients, and do the billing myself.

And so the challenge for us now — and one we’re looking forward to — becomes one of moderation. How can we be modern and nimble, but still bring the best practices we’ve learned along the way from traditional workplaces. How can we grow our design offerings in a way that utilizes everyone’s skills and roles, without stepping on toes or doing extraneous work ourselves? How can we improve our systems and protocols without being formal or oppressive? How do we build a company culture across web video chats rather than lunches? As Creative Director, I have to ensure that I’m making efforts to get the best work from our team, rather than going it alone. My role is to direct creatives rather than create directives.

Things are different than before, but that’s not to say they’re worse. New challenges, new protocols, new people and projects. Every new patch begins with a first stitch.

]]>http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/on-starting-my-new-job-at-mobility-labs/feed0Do You Need to Localize Your Website?http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/do-you-need-to-localize-your-website
http://www.mobility-labs.com/2015/do-you-need-to-localize-your-website#commentsFri, 22 May 2015 16:37:19 +0000http://www.mobility-labs.com/?p=2024Proper localization, which is the process of adapting your product to the local marketplace, will impact not only your web traffic, but sales, advertising conversion, mobile downloads and more. As access to the internet spreads, localization of your mobile and online presence and products, whether they be physical, digital, or informational, becomes more and more critical.

Localization isn’t just about translating your website, it’s about embracing the language, culture and customs of your target audience so that your information and products seem natural to your users. While localization isn’t necessary for every business or organization, in many cases it provides a great advantage.

What Could Localization do for your Business/Organization?

Increase Local Users

Even if you aren’t trying to distribute your product around the world, it’s rare these days that a single language is spoken in an area, especially in an ethnically and culturally diverse country like the USA. After English, the top three languages spoken in the USA are Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog (1). By adding localization to your website and offering your content in the languages most common to the area you’re targeting, you could potentially be opening up your product to a whole new group of users who are right in your area.

Increase International Presence

Improving your international presence would, for most organizations, be a good thing. If you are trying to sell a product, you are potentially opening your business to a whole new customer base. If you are a non-profit or information provider, expanding your international presence could potentially lead to new partnerships and perhaps some international funding.

Among the top 10 Global Websites in 2014, 86% of users were outside the USA. That number is up from 79% in 2013. (2)

When asked, more than 72% of global consumers said they prefer to use their native language for online shopping and more than half (55%) said they only buy from websites if there is information in their native language. A similar number (56.2%) said native language information is more important than price. (3)

More Targeted Advertising

As mentioned above, the majority of users prefer to shop and do research in their native language. It makes sense then that if your online advertising is localized and leads to localized landing pages, both click-throughs and conversions will improve. This would have a positive impact not only on businesses selling a product, but also organizations disseminating information. New users are always a good thing.

86% of localized campaigns outperformed English in both conversions and click-throughs. (4)

English campaigns had an average CTR and conversion rates of 2.35% and 7.47% respectively. Localized campaigns did better in both regards with a CTR and conversion of 3.34% and 9.08%. That is an increase of 42% and 22% respectively. (4)

Increase Mobile App Users

Smartphone and Tablet use is on the rise. Offering your mobile app in only a single language can significantly limit your ability to reach your target audience.

In 2014, an estimated 1.44 Billion people used Smartphones worldwide. That number is expected to top 1.9 Billion in 2015 and by 2018 an estimated 2.56 Billion people will be using Smartphones. (5)

50% of countries in the top 10 for downloads and revenue in the iOS App Store and 80% in the top 5 in Google Play are non-English speaking countries in Europe and East Asia. (6)

What the above statistics confirm is that unless your product is super local and super niche, if it isn’t localized, you’re probably losing users and potentially money.

Things to keep in mind when doing localization

The actual process of localization, depending on the platform you’re using, is pretty straightforward, if tedious and time consuming. It’s not overly difficult, but there are a few things to keep in mind that will make the whole process faster and easier.

Start the localization process as early as possible. The longer you wait to set your website/app up for localization, the more difficult it is going to be and the longer it will take.

Keep localization in mind when designing. English is a relatively ‘compact’ language so if you design your site in English, when it’s translated to other, longer, languages it’s possible for there to be some breaks in your design. You’ll want to test the various languages to make sure your layout doesn’t need adjusting. This is especially true when translating to non left-to-right reading languages and those with special characters.

Think through the content on your site carefully. Once you start the localization process, changing content becomes exponentially more time consuming and expensive.

Don’t rely on Google Translate for your translations. As helpful as Google Translate can be, it is not always the most accurate product out there and you don’t want to stake your business on it. Since localization ideally takes into account local culture and values, your best bet is to hire a professional translator from the region you are targeting to ensure the translation is both accurate and culturally appropriate.

While localization is an extra expense that often gets pushed to the back burner, if you have any desire to grow your international presence, it’s an important step to take and the payoff is potentially huge.